Typically, portable internet access methods may include the following two mechanisms: i) an Extensible Authentication Protocol-Authentication and Key Agreement (EAP-AKA) authentication mechanism using universal IC card (UICC); and ii) an Extensible Authentication Protocol-Transaction Level Security (EAP-TLS) authentication mechanism. The EAP-TLS authentication mechanism performs authentication using a certificate and a media access control (MAC) address stored in user equipment.
In the case of the EAP-AKA authentication mechanism using UICC, a service provider has information required for authentication in advance since the service provider needs to provide a user (a customer) with the UICC when the user subscribes to a portable internet service. In the case of the EAP-TLS authentication mechanism, many users may not necessarily purchase user equipment embedded with portable internet functions from service providers. Accordingly, when subscribing to a portable internet service using such user equipment, a user needs to provide a MAC address of the user equipment to a service provider.
Meanwhile, in the case of activating a portable internet service using user equipment supporting the EAP-TLS authentication mechanism, such activation processes may be classified into an online activation and an off-line activation. Hereinafter, an activation of the portable internet service may be referred to as an activation of user equipment for the portable internet service, an activation of user subscription for the portable internet service, or a proper portable internet service subscription.
Herein, where user equipment to be activated does not perform a portable internet service access, the off-line activation is realized by accessing an online subscription web page through other internet access schemes or by visiting a subscription agency.
In addition, the online activation is an activation scheme that accesses portable internet services directly using user equipment to be activated and then performs a service activation at an online subscription web page. In order to support the online activation scheme, when a non-activated user equipment tries to perform authentication, an authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server may enforce a restricted access-accept rule to permit only access to the online subscription web page (an online activation web page) without instantly performing an authentication failure process. Herein, the restricted access-accept rule enables an address of the online subscription web page to be sent to an access control system from the AAA server. Accordingly, when user equipment to be activated requests a web access in order to use the internet, the user equipment may access the online subscription web page (the online activation web page) by being redirected to an address of the online subscription web page, which the AAA server sent to the access control system, according to the restricted access-accept rule. Accordingly, an online activation procedure may be induced by such redirection process.
In this case, a user is generally required to input a MAC address of corresponding user equipment in order to activate the user equipment. If the user inputs a wrong MAC address, a service activation may be performed for the wrong MAC address. Furthermore, there is an inconvenience that the user should know the MAC address of the user equipment. For this reason, inputting the MAC address may be a burden on users.